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Under new or proposed laws, more voters would be required to show photo ID at the polls, or to prove their U.S. citizenship. Same-day voter registration would be ended in some places, strict new limits would make it harder to mount voter registration drives, and early voting has been cut back. Four states now make it difficult or impossible for ex-felons to regain their voting rights, even after they've served their sentences and become taxpaying citizens.

You'd think there was a raging epidemic of fraud around the country to justify all this diligent effort, but if there is, it's awfully hard to detect. As evidence of the need for Texas' tough new photo ID law, Attorney General Greg Abbott noted that the state had prosecuted 50 cases of vote fraud over the past decade — an average of five cases a year. Not exactly a crime wave.

In fact, what's really going on is a fight for partisan advantage. Republicans, overwhelmingly the authors of these new restrictions, benefit by holding down turnout of those least likely to register: poorer, older and minority citizens who tend to vote Democratic. Democrats, of course, want the opposite.

USATODAY OPINION

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Given the political stakes, the argument is not likely to be settled by reason. But that doesn't mean there's no reasonable solution.

Requiring voters to identify themselves, even with a photo ID, is a safeguard that helps build confidence in the process, and the Supreme Court found the requirement constitutional in a 2008 decision on Indiana's photo ID law.

But while carrying picture ID is second nature for the vast majority of Americans, about 10% of citizens don't have one. They don't drive, they don't travel by plane, and they don't do other things that routinely require most people to show a driver's license or something else with a picture on it. But they work, they pay taxes and they certainly should be able to vote. If a state requires its citizens to show a photo ID at the polls, officials should bend over backward to make sure that ID is easy to get.

The Justice Department says that's not the case in Texas, where Hispanic registered voters are about twice as likely as non-Hispanics to lack a photo ID. The department says that while a Texas voter ID card is free, getting one can be a challenge. Eighty one of Texas' 254 counties have no driver's license offices, and one state senator said his constituents would have to make a 176-mile round trip for the card. Further, if voters lack the documents required to qualify, the cheapest alternative requires them to spend $22 for a copy of their birth certificate.

Fraudulent voting is no joke, but trying to keep voters from the ballot box is equally troubling. "Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression," wrote Circuit Judge Richard Niess, who blocked the Wisconsin law. "Indeed, they are two heads on the same monster."

The fraud state legislators fret about surely occurs, but voting places are already carefully guarded by poll watchers from both parties, and photo IDs would do nothing to stop voter intimidation, vote buying and ballot tampering. The biggest problem at the polls isn't unqualified people scheming to vote illegally. It's qualified voters staying home by the millions.

If officials want a problem to solve, try that one.

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